Overview - What is Disaster Recovery?

Disaster Recovery (DR) is the process of re-establishing critical IT systems and technology and repairing the damages that result from a business disruption, whether caused by a major disaster or another crisis event. This may include recovering lost data, relocating IT capabilities and restoring IT frameworks communications and physical infrastructure.

While each organization is unique, below is a diagram that illustrates, at a high level, the basic business elements that are addressed in a sound Business Continuity Program, with the elements of the IT Disaster Recovery solution:

What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan is the documented set of procedures set in place in order to recover a business’s IT and/or physical infrastructure in the case of a business disruption. At the time of the crisis, the disaster recovery plan is enacted with the intention of restoring the business to its pre-interruption state.

What is Disaster Recovery Planning?

Disaster recovery planning is a key element of enterprise resiliency planning that involves creating strategies to get business systems enabled, back up and running in predictable, test-proven manners and timeframes, and in accordance with business expectations. Successful Disaster Recovery relies on timely and often urgent access to key IT and business information, such as process-application-server mapping, acceptable downtime tolerances for business processes and applications, system access restoration strategies and all related systems, infrastructure, personnel and communications documentation and procedures.